Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Robin Hood has long been a favorite research topic of mine, and upon arriving at Spencer I was interested to see what we have available. Within Special Collections, the offerings include 19th- and 20th-century printings of the iconic Howard Pyle The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Call Number: Children C821), collections of extant ballads (Call Number: O’Hegarty A224), and even a time travel adventure by William Wu (Call Number: ASF B2119). While most of the library’s holdings are within the Children’s Collection, I was interested in looking at some of the oldest items.

The quest for the “real” Robin Hood is as never-ending as it is ambiguous; there are very few (if any) written records that would provide evidence for Robin Hood as a historical person. The legendary outlaw is, primarily, a legendary and even mythic figure, preserved in song and popular imagination throughout the centuries.

You may be familiar with A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode as being one of the oldest ballads relating to the titular outlaw. Several of the items here at Spencer feature Lytell Geste, which comprises either the entirety of the volume (Call Number: B2069) or includes it amongst a broader collection of ballads (Call Number: O’Hegarty A224). As I was looking through them, a few things stood out to me.

The oldest volume I looked at is a 1795 edition of Joseph Ritson’s volume Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant, Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw (Call Number: C4323). The legend is largely credited to items recorded by either Wynken de Wode or William Copland, as you can see here in the introduction to Ritson’s recorded version of Lytell Geste.

While I had initially limited myself to looking at Lyttel Geste, and thought I might write primarily on the poem itself, I was immediately struck by the variance in prefatory materials between editions. Most notably, Ritson includes a detailed history of Robin Hood’s early life, as well as a family tree.

As you can see, Ritson’s accounting of the life of Robin Hood situates Robin as a member of the nobility, namely the Earl of Huntingdon. One might speculate on this rhetorical choice in light of contemporary events: Was there a need to firmly situate the image of the noble class as a champion of the common person in the wake of the American Revolution? We will likely never know, but Ritson’s scholarship on the subject gives us an interesting and valuable insight into ways in which the Robin Hood mythos has shifted over the years.

Indeed, every printing of Lyttel Geste that I looked at credits Ritson in some way. The volume at call number EPM X293 is an 1820 reprinting of Ritson’s seminal work, edited for younger readers and significantly shorter in length, and which also features a “family tree” of the Earl of Huntingdon.

The other major player in the printings I looked at is a scholar by the name of John Mathew Gutch, who reprinted Ritson’s Lyttel Geste text with some heavy revisions (Call Number: O’Hegarty A213). Gutch includes a version of Lyttel Geste that had been completely rewritten by the Rev. John Eagles, not only standardizing the spelling, but changing the language entirely.

Gutch casts some aspersions on Ritson’s scholarship and provides an overview of the scholarship to date. While Gutch does not broadly contest Ritson’s claim to Robin Hood’s nobility, he takes issue with a few key points of Ritson’s argument. Namely, Gutch stipulates that Robin Hood must have been of Saxon descent rather than Norman. Gutch draws out the distinction between Norman King Richard and Saxon Robin Hood, quoting from antiquarian and fellow scholar M. Thierry as well as delving etymologically into the origins of Robin’s surname.

While I can’t speculate on the utility of Gutch drawing out this particular narrative thread during his contemporary setting, I can say that it is a rich insight into possible interpretations of the story. There is general agreement that Robin Hood’s narrative fits best into the latter half of the 12th century, during the Princes’ Crusade, during which there is a noted divide between the French-speaking Norman aristocracy and the English-speaking common people.

The story of Robin Hood has long been mutable, with its various written forms being complemented or augmented by a rich oral history that is, for obvious reasons, unavailable to us here at Spencer. As Gutch says, “the surprising adventures of this chief of bandits of the twelfth century, his victories over the men of foreign race, his stratagems and escapes, were long the only stock of national history that a plain Englishman of those ages transmitted to his sons, after receiving it from his forefathers.” Robin Hood continues to fascinate and charm even outside of the era of his origin.

I had initially thought that limiting myself to comparing variations between versions of a singular poem would be a small enough scope for a blog post. As so often happens, I was mistaken. Even looking at just four items, I uncovered a wealth of information to dive into and a thousand threads of inquiry to follow. If you, too, are an aspiring outlaw hobbyist, I encourage you to peruse the following items, both at Spencer and in the broader KU Libraries collection.  

Grace Brazell
Administrative Associate

Selected Further Reading at KU Libraries:

• John Mathew Gutch’s scholarship on Robin Hood, 1847 (Call Number: PR2125 .G8)
• Reading Robin Hood: Content, Form and Reception in the Outlaw Myth by Stephen Knight, 2015 (Call Number: PR2129 .K57 2015)
• Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern by Lois Potter, 2008 (Call Number: PR2129 .I63 2008)

Selected Further Reading at Spencer:

• Headlong Hall. : Nightmare Abbey. ; Maid Marian. ; Crotchet Castle by Thomas Love Peacock, 1837 (Call Number: O’Hegarty B4480)
• The English Archer; Or, Robert Earl of Huntingdon, Vulgarly Called Robin Hood, 1821, 1823 (Call Number: B1177)
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown, in Nottinghamshire by Howard Pyle, 1940 (Call Number: Children C101)
• Robin Hood and Little John or the Merry Men of Sherwood Forest by Pierce Egan, 1850 (Call Number: O’Hegarty D168)
• Robin Hood and the Archers of Merrie Sherwood by George Emmett, approximately 1875 (Call Number: O’Hegarty D275)
• Robin Hood and His Merry Foresters by Joseph Cundall, 1850 (Call Number: Children 1258A)

Well-loved children’s books spark the magic from the thrill of adventure to imagination of far-off, enchanted places. Beloved by generations, children’s classic stories remain with us throughout life, whether it’s re-reading childhood favorites or sharing our most loved stories with young people in our lives. These classics ignite imaginations and impart timeless lessons. They become some of our most cherished friends that stay with us throughout our lives.

Spencer Research Library has a vast children’s book collection to be explored. Some works have multiple editions published throughout the years. Different editions often have different illustrations, annotations, and even adaptations. This is the first post in a series highlighting various children’s book titles in Spencer’s holdings. First up, we bring you Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Spencer Research Library has seven holdings of Treasure Island. The publisher, publication date, and call number of each volume are listed below:

• Cassell & Company, Limited: London, Paris, New York & Melbourne, 1886 (O’Hegarty B2959).
• Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1913 (SC Annex 326).
• Rand McNally: New York and Chicago, copyrighted 1916, published 1928 (Children C623).
• Grosset & Dunlap: New York, 1934? (Children 5948).
• Limited Editions Club: New York, 1941 (D7309).
• Award Books: New York, 195-? (Children B2846).
• Franklin Watts: New York, 1964 (C18419).

This introduction appears in most editions of the book:

To the Hesitating Purchaser

If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold,
And all the old romance, retold
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:

–So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave
Where these and their creations lie!

The first edition of Treasure Island – published by Cassell & Company in 1883 – featured no illustrations. Three years later, the publisher released a new edition with 18 pages of illustrations and 26 leaves of plates.

Maps of the island do not appear in every edition. Those that are included vary in detail, from topography and landmark descriptions.

The 1941 edition of Treasure Island, published by the Limited Editions Club, was limited to 1,500 copies.  Spencer Library’s edition is numbered 1,426. Colored Illustrations signed by Edward A. Wilson – which includes a signed lithograph of Long John Silver – and the unique binding of dark blue sailcloth and gold-stamped red leather spine label makes this edition a highly sought collectible.

Rand McNally published several editions of Treasure Island over the years. Kenneth Spencer Research Library holdings include a 1928 edition copyrighted in 1916. This edition features a durable hardback binding with full-page color illustrations along with black and white drawings. 

Details are scarce for many cover images. Several editions from this period featured Jim Hawkins or Long John Silver, given their key roles in the story. 

Meredith Phares
Operations Manager

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from Special Collections. Special Collections holds a wide array of rare books and manuscripts from throughout time. The collection “presently holds about 250,000 volumes printed since the mid-fifteenth century and about 250,000 manuscripts dating from antiquity to the present.”

The book, titled Boy: Tales of Childhood, is an autobiography written by Roald Dahl and published in 1984.  According to Wikipedia, the book “describes [Dahl’s] life from early childhood until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing children’s books as a career.” Throughout the book are photos from Dahl’s life. The book was followed up by a second autobiography titled Going Solo.

In one chapter of the book, “The Bicycle and the Sweet-shop,” Dahl remarks on his time at a private school. Though he does not remember much about the Llandaff Cathedral School, Dahl has two distinct memories from his two years there. The first memory he mentions is that of a boy riding a bicycle when he suddenly zooms by pedaling backward and not holding the handlebars. He then wishes to himself that someday he could do the same. The second memory is that of walking home from school with his friends and stopping at a candy shop any time they had the funds. One of his friends would frequently tell tales of how the sweets were made.

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British author who is well known for many popular children’s books including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. Many of Dahl’s books have been adapted into popular films.

I chose to highlight this book because it gives a glimpse into the author’s life in ways that regular children’s stories might not. I had not heard of the book before finding it in the library. I was simply looking for books by Roald Dahl and this title popped up. Many of Dahl’s children’s books bring back memories from my own childhood, whether it was wishing I had magic powers like Matilda or hoping Wonka’s chocolate factory could be real. Interestingly enough, Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my favorite movies as an adult. I even have it on DVD, so it is readily available at all times.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from our children’s book collection. The children’s book collection was founded in 1953 and has been built largely through gifts to the library. The collection consists of over seven thousand children’s books from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.

The book shared today, titled Tales of the Fairies, was written by Lewis Marsh and illustrated by Lilian A. Govey. Probably published in 1912, the book highlights fairy tales from various countries. Little can be found about the book online, but I stumbled upon it by searching terms for mythical creatures in the KU Libraries catalog. I chose to highlight this book over others for a couple of reasons. First, given the book’s condition, it is clear that it is quite old. Older books tend to grab my attention more because of the histories and stories they hold, both physically and metaphorically. My second reason was that the illustrations in the book are quite intriguing. The artistic style shifts from illustration to illustration, which adds variety to the book. Additionally, some illustrations are in color while others are grey and white.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing Uncle Henry’s Letters to the Farm Boy (1897) by Henry Wallace. Wallace (1836-1916) was born and raised on a farm in Pennsylvania. He spent much of his life on the farm before becoming a writer. By the time of his death, Wallace had written a total of six books. The University of Iowa Special Collections Department houses a collection of Henry Wallace’s papers including some diaries.

Each chapter of Uncle Henry’s Letters to the Farm Boy addresses a different thing a farm boy might encounter throughout his life. The chapters include “the farm boy and his father,” “the farm boy and his future business,” and “the farm boy and his education” (all shown below). The book at Spencer is a second edition printing and is signed by Henry Wallace himself.

I found this book merely by coincidence. I stumbled upon it one day while walking through the stacks. I was curious to see if the title was as literal as it seemed, and it was. I always find books like this fascinating because it shows a glimpse into what life was like back then.

 An online version of this book can be found via the Internet Archive.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services